The Papuan area, including New Guinea, Wallacea, and number of islands north and east of New Fuinea, has a rich vertebrate fauna and associated ectoparasites. Systematics of these ectoparasites is important in comprehending the epidemiology of diseases such as scrub typhus, plague, and arboviral infections; medical zoogeography, particularly because of the critical location between the main land areas of the Australian and Oriental regions, relative to Oceania, and at the northwestern limit of the transantarctic arc (cf. Gondwanaland, continental drift); and (partially as a corollary to last item) the evolution of ectoparasites and their hosts. The Bishop Museum has already brought together the largest collection of ectoparasites from this area, as well as a major reference collection of vertebrate hosts, with support from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the U. S. Army; the Museum has instigated research on all of the represented groups of ectoparasites. With this background we are in a position to complete the assemblage of material for definitive studies on the ectoparasites of this of this region and to continue the coordination of such studies; these are the objectives of this project. The opportunity to carry out the project is exceptional now, but it will later be diminished, perhaps severely, through changes in the Papuan area.